Press Releases

The "Give & Get" Sale starts today and ends Tuesday, November 30. Each day during the sale there will be huge savings on featured games and large game packs that are perfect for gift-giving throughout the holidays. In the spirit of giving, each day of the sale, Valve will be awarding 30 users with the top five games on their wishlists. To become eligible to win, simply load up your own wishlist with ten or more items now.

November 17, 2010 -- Valve today announced the launch of the "Recommended For You" referral services on Steam, a worldwide platform for PC and Mac games with over 30 million accounts worldwide.

The "Recommended For You" services on Steam are designed to help gamers discover new games and DLC based upon their tastes and recent purchases, as well as games recommended by friends.

Recommendations will appear both on the "Recommended For You" pages as well as in your Steam Community News Blotter. In addition, individual game pages will now include Recommendation info, providing gamers with even more information on the 1,200-plus titles available on Steam.

Oct 22, 2010- Valve and Activision Publishing, Inc today announced the upcoming holiday blockbuster, Call of Duty®: Black Ops (PC), is now available for pre-purchase via Steam, a leading platform for PC and Mac games with over 30 million accounts around the world.

Those who pre-purchase Call of Duty: Black Ops on Steam will be able to start playing immediately upon release on November 9, 2010, when Activision expects the title will be available worldwide. Developed by Treyarch, Call of Duty: Black Ops utilizes the Steamworks suite of tools. The title is rated "M" (Mature - Blood, Drug, Reference, Intense Violence and Language) by the ESRB.

In addition to leveraging Steamworks' Auto-Updating, Achievements, and more, Call of Duty: Black Ops will support Steamworks Cloud technology. The PC version of the product will be powered with Steamworks for both the digital and tangible versions of the game and, as with all Steamworks titles, offline play will also be supported.

"We are delighted to be delivering the year's most anticipated title with Black Ops to PC gamers around the world," said Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve. "We've collaborated with the development team to leverage the Steamworks suite of services to deliver the highest level of service to Call of Duty: Black Ops PC customers."

"Steam has been a great partner throughout development of Black Ops," said Mark Lamia, president of Treyarch. "We're working closely together to take full advantage of Steamworks to ensure we deliver the most polished and secure PC experience that our community deserves."

Call of Duty: Black Ops is slated for worldwide release the week of November 9 at retailers and via Steam. For additional Call of Duty updates, visit www.callofduty.com/blackops and also via Twitter @JD_2020.

Steamworks is a complete suite of publishing and development tools -- ranging from product key authentication to social networking services -- offered free of charge to publishers and developers. For more information, please visit www.steampowered.com.

October 18, 2010 - Valve® today announced the latest growth data for Steam, a leading platform for PC & Mac games and digital entertainment, revealing new account growth of 178%, sales growth of over 200%, over 200 Steamworks games shipped to date, and more.

During the past 12 months the platform had year-over-year new user growth of 178%, pushing the total number of active accounts to over 30 million, with over 1,200 games now offered. Peak simultaneous player numbers were also up to over three million, with over six million unique gamers accessing Steam each day.

In addition to new user growth, Steam sales during the trailing 12 months increased by more than 200%, putting it on track for a sixth straight year of realizing over 100% year-over-year growth in unit sales. To meet this demand, the Steam infrastructure has been increased and now has ability to run at 400Gps, enough bandwidth to ship a digitized version of the Oxford English Dictionary 92.6 times per second.

The period also realized continued adoption of the Steamworks suite of publishing services in tangible and electronic versions of today's popular games. Included in many of the year's biggest releases -- such as Sid Meier's Civilization V, Just Cause 2, and R.U.S.E., with more to come during the holiday season -- Steamworks has now shipped in over 200 since the suite of services was released two years ago. In addition, the Steam Cloud (introduced in Spring 2008) has surpassed the 100 million files saved milestone.

"Steam is on track to record the biggest year in its six year history," said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. "The year has marked major development advances to the platform with the introduction of support for Mac titles, the Steam Wallet and in-game item buying support, and more. We believe the growth in accounts, sales, and player numbers is completely tied to this work and we plan to continue to develop the platform to offer more marketing, sales, and design tools for developers and publishers of games and digital entertainment"

About ValveValve is an entertainment software and technology company founded in 1996 and based in Bellevue, Washington. The company's portfolio of entertainment properties includes Half-Life®, Counter-Strike®, Day of Defeat®, Team Fortress®, PortalTM and Left 4 DeadTM. Valve's catalog of products accounts for over 35 million retail units sold worldwide, and over 80% of PC online action gameplay. In addition, Valve is a developer of leading-edge technologies, such as the Source game engine and Steam, a broadband platform for the delivery and management of digital content. For more information, please visit www.valvesoftware.com.

October 13, 2010 - Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Dota 2, a massive sequel for one of the most played games in the world.

Coming to the PC & Mac in 2011, Dota 2 promises to take the unique blend of online RTS and RPG action that has made Dota popular with tens of millions of gamers and expand upon it in every way.

Since release, we've received a ton of feedback and feature requests from the Alien Swarm community. The most requested additions are more variety and greater difficulty.

With that in mind, we've added "Onslaught" mode, which introduces an AI Director that dynamically generates swarms of aliens based on several factors, such as the squad's stress level. Onslaught works with any difficulty setting and ensures no mission plays the same way twice.

Speaking of difficulty, we've also added a "Brutal" difficulty level for those of you who told us "Insane" wasn't insane enough. How brutal is Brutal? Nobody on the Alien Swarm team has managed to complete a mission on it.

If for some crazy reason Brutal is still too easy for you, there's now a "Hardcore Friendly Fire" toggle. When enabled, friendly fire deals full damage immediately, flamethrowers set teammates on fire much faster, and turrets will hurt you if get caught in their crossfire. HCFF truly tests your teams ability to work as a elite squad. Coordinating movement and firing lines become an even more integral part of the game.

Valve today announced that Steam, a leading worldwide platform for PC and Mac games, has added paysafecard to its collection of payment options for customers in many European countries. In celebration, customers who spend 20€ / ₤20 on Steam using paysafecard will receive a free copy of Portal™, the ground-breaking title that earned over 40 Game of the Year Awards, when they shop before August 25th.

About paysafecard groupThe paysafecard group, founded in 2000 in Austria and Germany, operate in 25 countries worldwide with offices in Vienna, London, Bern and Buenos Aires. With their successful online prepaid vouchers, the group have established themselves as Europes leading provider for prepaid payment solutions. In 2009 the group won awards for being the ‘Leading Prepaid Organisation’ and the ‘Best Prepaid Company outside USA.’ For more information, please visit www.paysafecard.com.

All PC versions leverage leading services for gamers around the world.Pre-purchasers receive original Mafia® now.

Valve and 2K Games today announced an agreement to power all PC versions of the highly anticipated Mafia® II with a host of Steamworks features. All Mafia II players will enjoy the benefits of the Steamworks features included in all PC versions, such as auto-updating, Steam Achievements, Statistics, downloadable content, and more.

Customers who pre-order the standard or Digital Deluxe Edition of Mafia II through select digital retailers, including Steam, will be given a free digital copy of the award-winning original Mafia® game that they can access and play now.

"Using Steamworks to power Mafia II has been a great benefit for 2K Games and our development team," said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. "It's meant that we can spend more time creating content and a great experience for our customers because we know that Steam and Steamworks are enabling these important features within the game."

"Mafia II is joining Sid Meier's Civilization® V as the next title to use Steamworks from 2K Games," said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. "Our focus for Steam is on building services that create value for our customers and for creators, and Mafia II, with its all-new game engine and inclusion of Steamworks, is a great example of that."

Mafia II is rated M for Mature by the ESRB and will be available in North America on August 24, 2010 and internationally beginning August 27, 2010. For more information visit www.steamgames.com.

2K Games is a division of 2K, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO).

About 2KFounded in 2005, 2K develops and publishes interactive entertainment software games for the console, PC, and handheld gaming systems through its three divisions: 2K Games, 2K Sports, and 2K Play. 2K publishes titles in today's most popular gaming genres, including first-person shooters, action, role-playing, real-time strategy, sports, casual, and family entertainment. The 2K label has some of the most talented development studios in the world today, including Firaxis Games, Visual Concepts, Irrational Games, 2K Marin, 2K Australia, 2K Czech, Cat Daddy Games, and 2K China. In just a few short years, 2K launched the 2007 Game of the Year - BioShock®; continued the award-winning Sid Meier's Civilization® series; delivered the #1 rated and #1 selling basketball franchise with NBA® 2K10*; and broke new ground in the family entertainment market with its multi-million unit selling hit Carnival Games. 2K is headquartered in Novato, California and is a wholly owned label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO). For more information, please visit www.2K.com.

* According to 2009-2010 GameRankings.com and The NPD Group

About SteamThe leading online platform for PC games and digital entertainment, Steam delivers new releases and online services to over 25 million PC and Mac users around the world. For more information, please visit www.steamgames.com.

About ValveValve is an entertainment software and technology company founded in 1996 and based in Bellevue, Washington. For more information, please visit www.valvesoftware.com.

Representing Steam's first day-and-date release for the Mac and PC, EVE Online: Tyrannis will be available to gamers later today,

The Half-Life 2 titles available now feature cross-platform support for Steam Cloud, allowing players to save their game progress on one computer, then seamlessly resume from that save point on another computer (Mac or PC).

In addition, HL2 and Episode One have been updated to include over 40 new Steam Achievements, which are available to all owners of these titles. The HL2 games also support Steam Play, enabling customers to purchase a game once and play it on all Steam supported platforms.

To celebrate the launch of the Half-Life 2 games, the titles are available for 30% off their regular price (for a limited time).

May 19, 2010 - The second round of Steam for the Mac launch titles are available now. This week's collection features a dozen games headlined by the first cross-platform multiplayer games offered via Steam.

"We were thrilled when we learned that Steam was coming to the Mac platform and started working on a native Mac version of Killing Floor immediately," said John Gibson, President of Tripwire Interactive, creators of Killing Floor. "Steam's advanced multiplayer support on both the PC and Mac has enabled us to bring Killing Floor to a whole new audience on the Mac and introduce them to the existing PC player community."

To celebrate the launch of these titles, Killing Floor will be offered at 33% off its regular price (for a limited time). An Altitude Free Weekend promotion is available now on Steam, and those who wish to purchase the game and play beyond the weekend may pick it up at 50% off its regular price. And Madballs in Babo: Invasion is also available at 50% off its regular price.

More single player games are also available today including Sam and Max: The Devils Playhouse Episode 2, Hearts of Iron 3, and more. Click here to see all Mac titles new to Steam.

An additional collection of Mac titles will launch next week via Steam.